Board games for shelter season
Justin Green, the AM Game Guy, is back for another episode!
I’ve been working in the yard lately. Moving plants, setting in new ones, deadheading peonies, trying to regenerate a fen where there probably was one before (barely possible; I just like trying). Then mixing a gin and tonic to enjoy the satisfaction and sore hamstrings of all the dirt-digging work.
That’s the lighter side of spring. We’ve also had fierce, deadly tornados. If you live around here, you’ve been touched by them in some way. Greenfield, Iowa, was razed by a massive EF-4 tornado—this rating that indicates winds ranging from 166-200 mph. You can see it in the incredible video below that my friend Molly shared with me, where it looks to be necklaced by several smaller tornadoes as it crunches through wind turbines like bendy straws.
Send a few dollars to help Greenfield get back on its feet here.
During spring, we often have to rush indoors to take cover. One April, I was sitting on my porch admiring my butterfly garden, then the wind shifted and an hour later an old oak tree was bisecting that same garden. We were chainsawing wood for days.
I’ve often attributed the bleakness of an Iowa outlook to devastating weather. My dad’s most enduring words of advice were: Never love something so much that you can’t walk away from it. I’m sure he meant a farm like the one he grew up on, where crops could be leveled by wind from one day to the next. But Dad trotted out that nugget for other losses, too: breakups, sports, bad meals, an entire house, his Ford Ranchero. Loss is baked into our mindset by our landscape. We get wide open fields, ancient burr oaks, resilient prairie flowers, an intact social fabric. We also get thunderstorms, derechos, and tornados that will lift your car and throw it a county over.
You want to get to a safe spot during a storm so you can wait it out. For my Dad, that was the front porch, at least during the approach. When tornado sirens wailed, Dad took my sister and me outside to watch the sky so we weren’t afraid. He’d point out funnel clouds, or just plain storm clouds, and I found it a comfort that a person could see these things coming, and prepare. Which, eventually, meant heading indoors and pulling out the board games.
As storms raged outside, I liked the quiet ruffle of Parker Brothers money through the banker’s hands. The skate of little cars with peg people through the game of Life. The pressing matters of grocery bills or postcards from camp in Payday. When the power went out, the Ouija board came out, too, and if everybody was calling Bloody Mary back from the dead half as much as we were, that lady never got any rest. I could take or leave Monopoly, which left most players idle once somebody bought Boardwalk. I mean, the Indiana section wasn’t too bad, but it was no Park Place, and you had to work the board for hours to make it lucrative. And storms are generally short.
Thunderstorms have been popping in and out of the forecast at random; they seem to like evenings best. Maybe it’s stormy where you are, too. Whether it’s a big thunderboomer, or just the emotional storm of kids leaving home after graduation, you may need to step inside and wait out some weather. We’re playing games with the neighbors this weekend, in fact.
In this spirit, I asked Justin Green back for another Analog Mix Tape episode, to talk about games that are good for this time of year, where growth and loss seem to be the name of the … game.
Hit play below to hear Justin’s 3 best recommendations for the season, and if you’re Des Moines local, where to buy them. Happy almost weekend.
Awesome!
Dr. Green!